Stories in an Almost Classical Mode

by Harold Brodkey

  I saw in Ann Marie the physical choice to be plain. The ferocity of her self-definition was like that of a very rich woman. She wanted to be rich and she often acted as if she was, as if she owned houses and farms and a great deal of money besides. She died a rich woman by local standards.

  LILA SAID, “I married her off; it wasn’t easy; she was an impossible person; but you know something, it wasn’t that, it was her looks; men were uncertain about her because of the way she looked; and she had no family—men marry families, some men do; they marry to get the answers to questions and a family has its ways. But here she was, a wonderful, wonderful cook, a housekeeper who knew how to do it, a woman who sang: she had a lovely, lovely voice; and no one wanted her. The man who took her got a good deal; she made a good life for people—there were poor men who would have taken her in a minute, but what good is that? She was proud; she would have died with a poor man—I had my work cut out for me, believe me; I had to find somebody for her, we had specifications, I had to shop around. She couldn’t get along with women, that was a defect, you know—finally I heard about this old German widower in Lillyburg, a real character; he was fat as a house; he had a lot of land, no mortgage, and a little money put aside; my brother’s foreman at the junkyard met him at a funeral and told me about him. I drove her to the church he went to, in Frederickville, that’s about ten miles from Lillyburg. Of course, he hoped it was me; he thought Ann Marie was the old married woman trying to marry me off; I was really something to look at, you know; I had my hair long that year, and I was wearing my fur coat—well, he liked her well enough, but what he really liked was talking to me. I told him there was no one to match her. Well, he was fat and she was fat; and they struck a deal. But she didn’t want you to be sad. She was afraid you’d have a relapse and die. I let her new boyfriend come to the house once to see how we lived, because we would be like relatives maybe; she knew how to keep a nice house; but you were so suspicious it scared us; we could see you smelled a rat. I can’t tell you all that went on; it was a farce of the first water, S.L. scooting around the house and being nice to the fat people, and all of us feeding you a cock-and-bull story.” So I wouldn’t die at the loss of my happiness. “She said the farmer looked like a blimp, that he was made out of pancakes; she had a mean tongue; what she said was true; and he had a mustache, a dyed mustache; and Ann Marie was being, oh, you know, pick any word, she was being it; and you were hanging around, you always thought you knew everything. It was a real pleasure to fool you, but everyone got sad—I guess it was the end of an era for us—and it was just too real what was happening to her; she was going to go live on a farm; he didn’t have a house in town yet; she was going to have furniture; I negotiated that; she was to do the front room and one bedroom over, he’d pay for that; and I gave her the pots and pans and a set of old silver plate; it would be valuable now; and I gave her two thousand dollars. He wanted five, but I just kept smiling at him and teasing him, and he came down; it was the principle of the thing with him. I had to guarantee her teeth; I had to take her to our dentist and get a note, can you imagine, a note about her molars, her wisdom teeth; he wanted no dental bills. He thought maybe she was lying about her age. He was a strange old goat—poor Ann Marie, she got no romance. He was a miser. You want to know what life is like, I’ll tell you: she wanted to marry someone with money; well, what she could get was a miser widower twenty years older than she was; and I’ll tell you something else: even so, that was a lot better than running this house and running after you all day long while you did what you wanted. I made S.L. lend them his car, but S.L. was persnickety about who drove his car; so he found a powder-blue Ford, powder blue was Ann Marie’s favorite color, and we paid for it. You know, we were crazy about Ann Marie, we couldn’t do enough for her; but everything costs money, and it gets complicated. Don’t look so suspicious; I’m not lying; I was sick to death and tired of having her underfoot all the time—now sit still, I want to tell you a funny part; it’s a sad part, too. If you know anything, you know you have to feel sorry for people—not you, you’re heartless; you don’t feel sorry for anyone; they were both so heavy the car broke down the first time they went out.

  “The Ford—Oh, it’s not fair, I know that; but learn from me: it’s not fair, but sometimes you have to laugh. There she was, thirty if she was a day, still a young woman—no, she was twenty-seven, just twenty-seven; if she’d been thirty, he could have insisted on five thousand (the idea was she wasn’t going to him to work; she was going to stay home and have a woman’s life, or I couldn’t have talked her into any of it)—but she was just young enough to whet his appetite; he thought he was getting a bargain. But people are funny, Wiley; he liked her; they were like kids in a way, new at everything, not very free and easy; they were scared of things. He had an accent, too, did I tell you, so he couldn’t laugh at her accent; but they neither one had the nerve to go someplace like a restaurant for regular Americans; they weren’t comfortable in those places. People did look at them; he looked like a farmer; he had a big, ugly neck, you know—some people think you have to laugh at people—so they went mostly to church things, where people were nice to them, within reason. It’s not nice but that’s how it was. They were on a bridge and the car broke down—my God. He was scared of heights, and Ann Marie had to go get help. Those things happen: we found the car for them and it broke down—no wonder Ann Marie wasn’t grateful when it was all over. Well, you don’t know how shy she was; you never paid attention; you thought she was God and had no faults; but she was crazy she was so shy. I think once she got married she never left her house—I mean until they got rich and traveled to Europe. And back. She couldn’t stand anyone looking at her, men or women; boys were maybe the worst for her; it was physical for her. I don’t know if it was psychological or not; but it was shame; it was the real reason she was a maid—people don’t really look at you; they look at you differently. If you ask me, she never got over anything; she was a very smart woman with no education to speak of—a little churchy stuff and some music. She used to hint I should get a piano, me with my headaches having a piano in the house; a piano and a dog and quintuplet children is what I needed, I told her.

  “Well, you know no one thought she was right in the head, she was just so strange, the issue was she looked like a crazy woman and that made her shy. I could always bluff, I could run rings around her if I didn’t have a headache; I could get around her right and left; but she didn’t like that; she got very cold to me.

  “You were very dependent on her, you were always throwing up and doing I don’t know what; but I used my head, I told you stories while I fed you, and you survived; the secret with you was you were nosy; I found it out. I may not like children but I have eyes in my head.

  “She didn’t want you to know she was seeing a man, and believe me, she changed her mind about that poor man a hundred times before we were done; I wanted her to tell you so you’d know; I wanted you to know who your real friends were: a mother is a mother, and a maid is a maid. But I’ll tell you the truth, when it came right down to it, I didn’t have the nerve to tell you. And S.L. didn’t. And she didn’t—so I knew you’d be angry with her and maybe it was for the best. So everything was hush-hush and tiptoe-tiptoe. S.L. would drive her downtown and the farmer would pick her up there and we’d tell you another cock-and-bull story; and she called to say the car broke down; she was in a state, a real state; she’d had to walk on the bridge and along the road and all the cars, all the people in cars, stared at her; well, you just don’t know what that’s like for someone who’s crazy with shyness, a strong woman like that, a fat woman with a heavy accent who doesn’t want to be stared at. She went all the way to a gas station because she wasn’t going to stop at anyone’s house or a roadside place, people she didn’t know, and have them hear her accent; and we all thought in those days that if she didn’t get back to you by your bedtime you’d wind up in the crazy house. And you probably would have. Two years seven months, maybe down
the drain, everyone was watching us, to see if we had to throw you back in the pond; it would have been terrible. I can be grown up about those things, but Ann Marie was very, very self-conscious.

  “You know her breasts weren’t big; she was just heavy; she really wanted people to think well of her; she was self-conscious like she was physically very different from the way she was, like no one could stop looking at her one way or the other; and maybe she would have been like that if she’d ever done anything about herself; but she never did. She was just a fat woman.

  “You can be bossed around by that and never have a life at all, you know—well, she was just desperate, just desperate; and she had no humor; people say Jews don’t have humor; but they should know Ann Marie. I don’t remember a single joke except sarcasms; she had no humor; she was going to die; she was having a fit at a gas station; you were going to die; she was in a gas station at some dinky crossroads not far from Lillyburg—it was just terrible—and to tell you the truth, you were pacing around the house, you were pale as death, you were very bossy at that time, you thought you owned the house, you thought your health came first, and you were getting ready to carry on because she wasn’t there. And she’s hysterical, too, just hysterical, everyone’s looking at her, she’s out on the open road, oh my, oh my. I had to call everyone; I got someone to go to bring her back to the house and someone to go help him with his Ford; he was like a fish out of water with his accent, too, you know; and she saw she had to get away from you then or she’d never get away; and why shouldn’t she have a life of her own, she deserved a life, she’d done enough for us, she’d done a lot for you, too much, you were spoiled, we never could control you after she left, you wouldn’t ever be nice to S.L. If you couldn’t have her, you never thought we were nice to you—

  “And she was just as bad—she thought I was a witch. But there I was, giving up my life, my comfort, throwing away the best household help I ever had, right out the window, and no one appreciated that—oh, she appreciated it some, but she felt too humiliated, too humiliated and too eager; she wanted money. You wanted to know if she was happy, you wanted to know how it all happened—well, she didn’t like my system, my not telling you and just doing it, just disappearing, her going off and not coming back, but S.L. every time he tried to tell you, he gave up, and the atmosphere in the house was terrible. I’m not lying much—I honestly don’t remember. It was a big thing then, but I’ve had other things in my life. Of course, you knew something was wrong, so she lied to you, then she felt terrible, finally she just went off—and we told you. I told you; S.L. was scared to. I told you you might as well start getting over it because she was never coming back, and suffering never helped anyone, and it wasn’t good for your looks. You came home from a car ride with my brother Henry one day—he was sweet to you, he worried about you—and Ann Marie was gone and I told you what happened and you just went into your room and wouldn’t come out; this went on for days but you got over it; oh, you were so easy to fool. I got all dressed up, I put on makeup and some jewels and took you down to the kitchen, and I had perfume, and you just sat and watched me like you were already dead. I told you a story like a fairy story about a woman like Ann Marie who wanted a house and who wanted little boys just like you to come out of her own belly and she wanted a farmer, she went to live with a farmer, and you said, ‘In the dell,’ so if you were talking cute I figured you’d survive.

  “She called, naturally she called, so then I told her she shouldn’t see you, it was better not—cut it off clean, get it over—until some time passed. She got angry at me and said I’d tricked her—can you imagine? After all I’d done for her, and although I say it, I did a lot for her, trust me on this, and I did it for her good, I knew what her heart’s desires were, but it wasn’t enough. She wanted more, she wanted everything. She said I laughed at her and got just what I wanted. What did she expect—that I was a fool? In this life nothing is free, you have to pay for things; so she wouldn’t talk to me, she wouldn’t do me any favors after that.

  “So whatever I know, I know only from hearsay. I heard she wore black a lot; I heard they got along better than you might think. I heard she was very charitable—with everyone but me, I guess; you know, you never know with Christians; money’s not the least of it with them; she told me she didn’t approve of usury, but I guess her disapproval died a natural death when she got a chance at it herself—I heard she and her husband lent money; they were moneylenders and they got into funny business, although I will say this, she had a good reputation around that little town, Lillyburg—so she couldn’t have been too grasping.

  “Who knows, who knows anything? Who knows what it was really like for someone like her? I’ll tell you something: I hope she was lucky; she was a good woman and she deserved to have a good time, but I don’t think someone like that knows how. She didn’t know much, and a lot of what she knew was me. I bet she dressed like me.…

  “Oh, I don’t want to sound cynical; you want a happy ending, I’ll give you one: the last time I saw her was six months after her wedding; she came to ask about you. I wouldn’t let her see you, and she was sad; she looked happy when she arrived, but she was sad, she was angry with me, she said unpleasant things. She was a hard worker and a hard judge—I’ll tell you the truth: she was happy telling me hard things about myself.… Isn’t that a happy ending? She thought you were wonderful, but you were more trouble than any six other children in the state. She said to tell you she liked you and she missed you—I think I told you that at the time, but you didn’t want to hear, and anyway, what she said I was to tell you was too sentimental for me to repeat. But really, Wiley, she really did care about you, I’ll vouch for that, she watched over you night and day—it’s too bad it was so harmful. I never can see why it is things can’t work out, but they never do, are you old enough to know that yet?”

  ANN MARIE always made it a moral issue with me that I believe her whether she actually lied or not. I was to trust her, trust her motives, trust her love and my luck and God’s will with the world, and not blame or doubt her. I can’t see that I ever did, although in the real world she was good to me as such things go.

  When she talked, Ann Marie’s phrases were short, politely unastonished, often commanding. She owed it to God to talk like that, sort of. And that made it hard to know what she meant, since if she was tired, and I knew she was, I would still hear her say to people that she wasn’t. I believed I was supposed to agree with her and take her literally and trust her, whatever she said.

  Ann Marie would say she was cheerful: “I’m gut—I’m always gut—ha-ha-ha.”

  But sometimes she was angry, sometimes low in spirit. She suffered queerly strong dips of will that seemed to move toward her being black-spirited, a berserk melancholy that was very willful, that vibrated with anger and maybe with some deep physical pain or dysfunction that didn’t stop her from working; when she was like that, the house seemed to tremble darkly until she was better. She might toss her head or do some version of a physically appealing act, but hers would be a gross version, like a circus elephant (Momma’s mean phrase) or like a circus horse: take your pick, and she would say she was good, nothing was ever wrong with her.

  I remember listening in wonder at the considerable difference each time in what she said, even when the syllables and circumstances were similar to each other. Gut might sound more like good or less like good, and she might be anywhere in the spectrum from very sad to very angry or in a good mood really and without sarcasm, or in a good mood but sarcastic and self-effacing, when she said it. The word, gut, the word was offered as if it had a fixed social quality, as if it did her credit—the last phrase is Momma’s.

  She paid attention to what women wore, but not shrewdly or acutely—and, according to Momma, Ann Marie didn’t listen to women at all and that was a mistake “for someone in her position: men aren’t going to teach her anything, you know.”

  Sometimes Ann Marie was sensitive to what was going on (Momma
’s phrase), with an energy and a coerciveness that make me shiver even now. “You really behaved for her and for no one else.” S.L. said that.

  The idea of loving her was warm and heaped up, like leaves or dirty laundry at the bottom of the laundry chute.

  I sit in the hurly-burly of Ann Marie’s stillness and fixities of goodness and her claims of good judgment. I watch her lift a spoon of cottage cheese and applesauce, the only two foods I can manage; and I am suspended inside my fear of sickness as well as inside my trust for her. We have our drama of trust and digestion or distrust and nervous anorexia. Failure condemns me, or perhaps condemns us both—both, if we are sincerely attached to each other.

  I look at Ann Marie. I contemplate swallowing the applesauce. I live and tremble; and spasms of nausea assail me, every smell and every sight of food, every one, forces me toward illness. I teeter now on some borderline between illness and just managing not to be ill. Cramps, the inner twisting of my pained self, push my consciousness toward the opening of the pit of illness while I cling to the sight of Ann Marie. I will be ill if I eat just as surely as the floor will hold my weight if I stand on it, but I trust her that it is required. This is in the real world, this drama of my nausea and her pride.

  She knows what’s going on—more or less. She knows my life depends on her, on her knowledge of things. I have to believe in the real nature not just of her wishing me well but of her ability to see what I can’t see, things about life that make it O.K. for me to suffer this, this loss of control when I swallow—that make it O.K. and reasonable to live in these circumstances; she oversees the chance or vague hope of meaning in these circumstances—ill luck, ill health, all of it. She is surer of her purposes than Momma is.